If an alliance is forthcoming, it would make sense to disclose at VMworld or at AWS: Reinvent in November. Make no mistake, while huge competitors, the two also need each other. AWS needs enterprise credibility which VMware has and VMware needs to prove its cloud bona fides. Of course, any such alliance also poses risks to both — what self-respecting capitalist entity wants to share customers with a rival?

Of course, the AWS outage this weekend, could give VMware ammo if it wants to keep trash talking, but that’s a dangerous game if you’re trying to build a partnership.

2: vCloud Hybrid Services availability and traction:

VMware says its proposed vCloud Hybrid Services — it’s sorta-kinda answer to AWS but for corporate workloads only — has been available to a limited number of customers for a few months. We need to hear from some reference customers on the trial and about their plans to migrate enterprise workloads to this cloud.

And, since VMware promised broad availability in the third quarter and the we’re well into that quarter now, if VCHS isn’t all queued up and ready to roll, the company, already late to the cloud biz, had better have a good reason why. Tick tock, fellows.

Word trickled out late last week –just ahead of VMworld — that VCE cut four technical employees including Rob Markovic, a technology lead with the converged hardware effort. A VCE spokesman confirmed the cuts but said they are not part of a broader restructuring at the 1,400-person company. In February, the VCE partner companies announced that vBlock converged hardware business hit the $1 billion run rate but partners Cisco and EMC also took big losses on that business.

4: Can VMware stem the bleeding?

VMware has seen an exodus of high-profile execs over the past year, starting with the transition of former CEO Paul Maritz out about a year ago as step one of his move to the EMC-VMware Pivotal spinoff. Some of those exits were to be expected — Maritz took some people with him so they’re still under the umbrella held by parent company EMC.

Others left as VMware de-emphasized or sold off “non-core” technologies like Zimbra, Sliderocket and Wavemaker etx. But the departure of other top executives — CTO Stephen Herrod, and especially former cloud infrastructure head Bogomil Balkansky, definitely contributed — right or wrong — to a perception of brain drain.